"Spare" by Prince Harry

Spare (Jan. 10, 2023) by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

It’s easy to relegate Prince Harry to the role of second son, the Spare, the once lost-looking young boy trailing along at his mother’s funeral procession, growing up to act out. But he’s much more than how the media and tabloids have painted him. He’s always a son, a brother, later an uncle, a husband and a father. He’ll always be part of a royal bloodline, a veteran of the British Army and an advocate for social causes. Parsed into three parts, we see a carefree Harry who’s close to his adoring mother, the late Princess Diana, and the dramatic turn when she’s tragically gone, and he’s struggling at school, at life. There’s his time finding his place in the military and awakening his passion for social advocacy. And then he finds Meghan Markle, whose beauty strikes him “like a punch in the throat.” Their love story is a whirlwind fairytale filled with nightmare thorns.

            Full admission: I am guilty of growing up thinking of Prince Harry as a bad boy, up to no good. In comparison to my goody-two-shoes self, he actually was a bad boy. But he’s also had to live in a spotlight that I never will, and I can’t begin to imagine what that’d be like or how horribly I’d handle it, what vices I might turn to, to try to cope with such celebrity.

            Harry’s memoir is refreshingly insightful, compelling and harrowing. From doing his own laundry to drinking and controlled substance usage to PTSD, from his late mother to now-wife, from military service to racist and misogynistic attacks on Meghan and her family, and the vulture-like media and infernal paps (paparazzi), Harry leaves no stone unturned. One cannot blame him for wanting to share his story, and I appreciate his transparency. He can be disparaging, even toward members of his own family, but it’s no secret that there’s been a rift. There’s self-doubt and self-assurance, vulnerability and strength. This autobiography is intimate and authentic, as Harry details his adventurous road of highs and lows, from grief and panic to healing and love. Maybe you want to pick this up because of the hype or the spilling of royal tea, but I hope you stay for the candor.

            Since I empathize with sweating easily, these lines made me chuckle: “I wasn’t sure I could endure this kind of hot. The Australian Outback had a climate I didn’t understand and which my body couldn’t seem to accept. ... I wilted at the mere mention of heat: how was I supposed to put up with an oven inside a blast furnace inside a nuclear reactor set on top of an active volcano?” (p. 85)